Crony capitalism is like a flesh eating disease. It encourages everyone to look solely after their own individual interests. Then once a portion of society is exploited and impoverished by the greedier part of society to the point of becoming a burden on them, the rich want to "cut them off" or let them rot away. The cycle then repeats, until very few are left at the top extremely wealthy and powerful, but with no middle class left to exploit.
Not sure what the solution is or that there is any single solution, wealth inequality seems to beget greater wealth inequality.
Other countries do infrastructure better and have water that is demonstrably better than in a lot of places in the US.
It makes it hard to do a direct comparison since other countries don't have to do as much.
Perhaps the issue here isn't accountability but ability to do the change properly.
Also yes I agree, safe potable water in the worlds richest country should not be an issue in 2017.
I also think that natural monopolies should be heavily state governed if not state owned.